


Victory

by Menzosarres



Series: "Jeripocalypse" [2]
Category: Jessica Jones (TV)
Genre: F/F, Lesbian Lawyers, Like..., Nietzsche, Power Dynamics, Smut okay, political smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-21
Updated: 2015-12-21
Packaged: 2018-05-08 01:57:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5479040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Menzosarres/pseuds/Menzosarres
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pam’s lips tasted like victory: hot and sweet and infinitely satisfying, and while Jeri would never don armor or take up the sword, she could fight wars for these lips, this skin, this woman, all the same. Fight, win… conquer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Victory

**Author's Note:**

> A continuation of "Shouldn't" that could almost stand alone. Written in response to two requests on tumblr for a sequel and one for sex. My blog is in a state of Jeripocalypse; this is the result.

Jeri had always left Pam in charge before. To a point. She knew Pam wasn’t comfortable with this, with their dynamic, with what it meant to be the “other woman,” to sleep with her boss, to be in bed with the same fingers that signed her checks. And Jeri was well past the point of needing to  _take_ control in the bedroom to  _feel_  in control. To be in control. So, in the past, she let Pam initiate their kisses. She let Pam sneak up behind her in the office and touch her with all that keen adrenaline of the forbidden romance, all the eager fear that someone could walk in, catch them in the act. She let Pam decide where she wanted Jeri’s fingers, when she wanted her lips instead. Even with Pam taking her wrist and sliding both of their hands up the inside of her thighs, pressing her palm and Jeri’s palm together against her, directing her own pleasure almost completely, Pam never could seem to turn away from Jeri’s eyes, and that was a different kind of control Jeri never had to ask for, never had to take. Pan wanted  _her_ , and whatever that meant to the younger woman, whether that meant power or pleasure or that inexplicable  _thing_  that people seemed to mean to one another, Pam wanted her, and Jeri allowed it, and it was always… good.

Things were different, after Kilgrave. Neither of them could stand another day of apologies, so every time they were pulled together, the air was thick with the things they never finished saying, the lingering angers and regrets that one painful conversation, a few tears, and a kiss that proved things weren’t over couldn’t  _begin_  to lend closure to.

And Pam didn’t want control anymore.

Jeri had her suspicions. Maybe Pam was trying too hard to step away from their old games, their old dynamic. There were parts she couldn’t distance herself from; she couldn’t push away Jeri’s own words reminding her what her ultimatum had led to, what using sex for control could do. She couldn’t stop seeing Wendy whenever she saw Jeri, couldn’t stop remembering what it  _really_ looked like to have control, the ultimate control, in ending someone’s life.

And maybe it was none of those things, but Jeri wasn’t going to look too hard, because that part of her that had gotten so comfortable in her own power that Pam’s initiative, Pam’s lead in their relationship had been welcome… That part of her was fractured, struggling against what it had felt like to be out of control for the first time in her adult life, what it had felt like to be desperately trying to manipulate someone who could kill her with his words alone, someone with all the powers of persuasion she had built her life upon, but who had corrupted her game, cheated far more thoroughly than she ever thought possible, and had ripped away decades of the comfort she’d fought for in one single afternoon. Jeri’s grasp on power felt far more tenuous, taunting her to grab on where she could, take everything, be invulnerable and untouchable and  _in control._

It took a lot of willpower to tread more carefully these days. Pam helped, letting Jeri take the lead. And, in an entirely different way, Jessica helped. Jessica was making sure that, in her professional choices, she was crossing… not less lines, but different ones, ones that helped someone other than herself, and Jeri was… grateful, though she’d never have said it out loud. She was cautious of her old habits, sickened by what she had seen Kilgrave do with his  _gift_  that she had already done a hundred times over with her influence and silver-tongued powers of manipulation, sickened by the inescapable image of her wife’s bloody skull and glassy eyes. Before, it had been easy enough to tell herself it was fair, it was her  _victory_ , her  _right_  to outmaneuver and outthink and outrank those around her who had just the same choices as she had, but hadn’t bothered to use them as well as she did, hadn’t been able to get as far. It was her choices that let her win, theirs that made them lose.

It wasn’t that simple anymore.

When she admitted it to herself, Kilgrave had given her choices, too. Sometimes. It didn’t make them any less impossible.

So she was being  _good_. Oh, she was being herself. She was still  _winning_. Jessica Jones would be sitting in prison if it weren’t for her. She wasn’t  _ashamed_  to manipulate the truth, but she was cautious, now, of how quickly that could come back to bite her. But she could do it, for the moment. With Jessica’s eyes watching over her like some drunken, ambivalent god, she could reign in her own desires for power.

Not control, though. Not anymore.

She couldn’t  _stand_  giving up control.

And Pam, thank god, didn’t want her to.

Even with everything between them, even with the anger she still sometimes saw flashing in Pam’s eyes, the regret she left behind in the nail marks on Jeri’s shoulder blades, Jeri had never been so glad this woman had decided to stay in her life. Jeri could turn up on her apartment doorstep and Pam would buzz her in without question. She could walk up the stairs, avoiding the eyes in the elevator, and push through Pam’s door without knocking, knowing she would be there, waiting, letting Jeri make the first move, letting Jeri pursue her without falling back on old tricks, without forcing them to dredge up things drenched in bitter history, without even waiting for Pam to express her desire, without  _waiting_  without  _speaking_  without  _games_.

Pam wanted her, needed her, even, and Jeri could give her that, give her herself, even if she couldn’t stand to give up anything else.

///

The first time, it was too soon, but neither of them could have stopped it. It was the first  _day_ , for god’s sake, the day when Pam stormed into her office and demanded answers and… broke down, gave up on revenge, and kissed her. But Pam left when the phone rang, when Jeri flinched in the middle of their kisses, finger and thumb resting on either side of the fourth button she had undone on Pam’s dress, fabric parted all the way down to her navel. Jeri’s eyes had flicked towards the phone—a glance, just a  _glance_ —and Pam was gone.

She stared at it for a long time after Pam left. It was a client, one from the time before, someone paying her an incredible amount of money for an incredibly petty grievance and she just couldn’t _care_  anymore. So she stared, and Amber-who-would-never-be-Pam picked it up at her desk outside, took the message, and brought it to Jeri, still standing, frozen by a strange longing she couldn’t easily name, beside the window.

She thanked Amber, and sent her home.

Then, she texted Pam.

_Come back._

Later, Pam admitted she hadn’t even left the building. She had made it to the restroom on the first floor, trying to wash away the color in her cheeks and the brightness in her eyes and the smear of lipstick at the corner of her mouth and the disgust she felt at having just kissed the same woman who was always going to answer phone calls before answering to anyone else’s emotional need and…

Well, she hadn’t admitted it in so many words, but the self-loathing had been practically dripping off of her when she answered Jeri’s text, when she showed up in the office doorway far too quickly, without hesitation, and Jeri recognized the sentiment well. She couldn’t rid herself of it, that slimy aftertaste to her own life, her own decisions, but Pam didn’t have to be stuck with it. Not if Jeri proved her wrong, proved that she was someone worth coming back to, proved that wanting her wasn’t something to be ashamed of, and maybe, doing that much, might help her with her own self-loathing, too.

So she didn’t apologize. That wasn’t what this was about. She met Pam in the doorway, pulled her into her arms, and kissed her. She didn’t ask, didn’t explain, just pulled Pam as close as she could, closer, and tried to fill the kiss with the promises she could never say aloud. When Pam responded, clutching Jeri’s shoulders, melting into it, Jeri wondered if she hadn’t gotten at least a little bit of it right.

“This is such a bad idea,” Pam groaned when they pulled apart. “You are so bad for me, Jeri.”

“You’re right,” Jeri confessed. “But you came back anyway.”

Nails dug into her shoulders, and Jeri tried not to flinch, feeling at least one land on a not-yet-healed cut. She distracted herself with Pam’s skin, kissing her throat, the softness under her chin, working her way across her jawline. “I didn’t take the call,” she admitted, breathing the words into the hollow of Pam’s throat. The nails tightened further. Jeri sucked in her stomach against the pain, and they slowly loosened their grip. “Let me try to be good for you,” she whispered when she reached Pam’s ear, hating the hint of desperation in her own voice. “I could be good for you again.”

Pam shook her head, swallowing thickly. “You’re not good for anyone. You never have been; you never will. It’s not you, it’s—”  

“—This is good, though,” Jeri insisted. She trailed a finger down between Pam’s collarbones. “What we had… it could have been perfect.” She fingered the top button on Pam’s dress for the second time that night. “What do you want from me? Why did you come back? This?” She flicked it open.

Pam’s breathing hitched. “I—I don’t know.”

Jeri’s hand stilled, but she didn’t pull away. She had never seen Pam like this before, vulnerable and unsure at the prospect of physical intimacy. It had always been the least complicated thing between them, a clear desire Pam would act on without hesitation. She could see that desire in Pam’s eyes, now, but Pam wasn’t moving, wasn’t directing, wasn’t taking control.

“We don’t have to,” Jeri whispered. “We could… talk.” The word sounded flat, even to her. Talking would be more of what they’d only just finished, accusations and apologies and tired, useless blame. They’d only barely chased Kilgrave’s ghostly presence out of the room; she had no desire to let him back in again. Still, she made herself repeat the offer, the way out, finger still resting between Pam’s breasts. “We don’t have to do this.”

Pam made a small sound in the back of her throat, something between anger and desire. “I want to, Jeri. I mean, I always want you, even when…”

Slowly, Jeri let her hand drift lower again, freeing the second button. “Even when I’m bad for you.”

Pam licked her lips, eyes looking left, right, anywhere but at her, and Jeri felt a jolt of understanding pierce through her, along with a stab of desire.

“So. You don’t know what you want?” Jeri asked, echoing Pam’s words, keeping her voice carefully level. “Are you sure about that?” She felt her own tongue flick out, gliding over dry lips, purely habit, but it pulled Pam’s eyes to her mouth, so she didn’t mind.

“I—No?” Pam said, and Jeri didn’t know which question she was answering, and she didn’t care.

She undid the third button, enjoying how the newly revealed skin allowed her to see Pam’s breathing picking up.

“You want me to help you figure it out though, don’t you.”

All of Pam’s breath fled in a single, shuddering sigh. “Jeri—”

“—I know.”

And she did. Pam was hurting, Jeri had hurt her, but desire didn’t always care about hurt. Hurt was about… wanting, wanting things to be different, better, but desire was  _need_. Hurt was _shouldn’t_ , desire was  _damn you, yes, please, do it anyway._  Pam didn’t want her, didn’t  _want_  to want her, more likely, but she had come back anyway, because there was something, still, something Jeri had, that Pam needed. It was different. Pam had never really needed her before. Wanted, always, but there was a vulnerability wrapped about her now, tight and strangling, and she was begging Jeri with her eyes and her unspoken words, to remind her that… Jeri had everything under control. That was what she’d asked for, before, wasn’t it? And yet, back then, “everything,” didn’t include this; sex was different, separate. Now, though, maybe it did.

So she could start with desire. She could work with that, the most pressing need, and then she could see what there was to do about the wants, the parts that still hurt.

She kissed Pam, then, and she could feel it, that  _melting_ , the way Pam fit against her mouth and her body, molding to Jeri’s touch, how all the confusion fell away when Pam was in her arms, and she realized, maybe, she could take care of everything, desire and hurting alike, here, now.

The dress went quickly, then. Bra, panties… gone. The bandage on her hand couldn’t begin to slow her down, not until she had Pam’s skin, all of it, revealed to her again.

And Pam was helping, undoing the clasp, stepping free of the clothes, pulling Jeri’s hands towards her.

They hadn’t actually done this, not here, not in the office. Here it was only ever teasing, because Pam could play with the power she had over Jeri, but at work, it wouldn’t do to go too far, to further muddy the waters of their entirely inappropriate power disparity. It had always been hotels, lingering early afternoons blocked off for nonexistent meetings, and something about that, the string of impersonal rooms in discreet, impersonal places, felt entirely more sordid than this, then now, with Pam’s skin pale and trembling against her office wall. This felt entirely too personal, and that felt… right.

Pam reached for her, pinching the fabric of her dress, but Jeri pushed her away. This wasn’t about her, not now. “We have time,” she murmured. “Let me… convince you.”

Jeri wasn’t even touching her, but Pam shivered. Jeri had noticed it before; how could she not? Pam loved her voice.

And Jeri wouldn’t hesitate to use that to her advantage.

“I’ve missed this.”

She closed a tiny bit of the distance between them, just enough to easily touch her skin. She kept her hands light, teasing goosebumps to rise along Pam’s sides, across her stomach, and up between her breasts. She kissed her, then, a hand just beneath each collarbone, pressing her back against the wall. Again, and again, and once more, like she might never have another chance, like she could convince Pam, with her lips alone, to make sure she  _would_  have another chance.

When she drew back, Pam looked down, inhaling deeply. Jeri traced two fingers across one shoulder, up along Pam’s neck, until she could press them beneath her chin, insisting Pam look her in the eyes. “Pam,” she murmured. The younger woman’s stare was glassy, distant, and Jeri didn’t want that at all. “Pam,” she said again, sharper.

Pam blinked, slowly, and when her eyes opened again, Jeri realized the glassy stare had been the start of tears. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I—” Pam stammered as she turned away, rubbing at her eyes. “Jesus, I’m never like this, I’m such a mess.” She crossed her arms, covering herself as best she could, then turned further, reaching for her dress on the floor. “I asked you to, and I don’t know why I…”

Before Pam could pull too far, Jeri reached out, catching her shoulder, pulling her back into the circle of her arms. “It’s alright,” she managed. Platitudes were not her strong suit, but in this moment, Pam needed her words. “Pam, we can stop, we don’t have to—”

“—It’s not alright!” Pam insisted. She dropped her dress, clutching at the fabric of Jeri’s neckline instead, fingers tense and shaky. “I—I want you, Jeri. I just… I was so ready, to never do this again, not to  _want_  you anymore.” Her words were clear, unaffected by her tears. “I’m not supposed to want this, to let you do this, but you—”

“—You know I love you,” Jeri murmured, cutting short Pam’s tense, frustrated words. She wrapped her arms slowly around Pam’s waist, until she could run her hands carefully up and down her spine. “Even if you had left, it would still be true.” It was. Not that she really wanted it to be. It had been incredibly difficult, coming to terms with that, with the realization that Pam was quickly becoming the one person she couldn’t stand to lose. That she couldn’t stand letting go. She had done so many  _stupid_  things for Pam already. She had abandoned stability for Pam, abandoned _sanity_ , nearly lost her job. Pam had stolen her way to the center of Jeri’s world, and letting her back out of it had been so, so hard. Still, she had almost done it, cut ties, moved on, had almost believed that getting Pam out of jail would be the end, but the moment Pam had kissed her tonight, the moment she cried in her arms, both then and now… Jeri knew she couldn’t let herself lose Pam again. Whatever it took, however far she had to reach, however many strained apologies Pam needed to hear, Jeri would do it.

“I want to fix this,” she murmured, turning slowly, putting her own back against the wall so Pam could lean against her as she continued soothing her with her touch and her words. “I would do anything to keep you,” she added. Truth, again, though she wouldn’t tell Pam what she knew she was leaving unsaid, that she would turn Hell’s Kitchen inside out to do it, rip apart the world, if she had to, fight with her last breath, and when she had won, because she always, always won, she would bring Pam back, pull her into her arms, let her sleep against her shoulder, touch her, hold her, whatever she needed to know she was safe, that she didn’t have to be afraid of what it meant to  _want_  Jeryn Hogarth, of what Jeri might do to her, ever again. Because Jeri had made up her mind, and Pam was the one she couldn’t lose, so she was the one, the  _only_  one, she couldn’t hurt. She had done it already; she knew what it felt like.

Never again.

It was a strange thing for her. Love. She didn’t really like it, but here it was.

“You mean so much to me,” she added, letting one hand rest in the small of Pam’s back as the other continued its slow wanderings up and down her spine.

“I hate that I want to believe you,” Pam admitted, reaching up to awkwardly catch Jeri’s bandaged hand in one of hers, holding their fingers twined together against her shoulder. “I thought I was getting good at it, picking out your lies. I don’t know anymore.”

Jeri held her more tightly, ignoring the elbow digging into her ribs, pressing her nose into Pam’s hair and breathing in. “This isn’t a lie. I wouldn’t do that. Not to you.”  _Never_ , her brain supplied, but she couldn’t say that. Pam didn’t want to hear that, to listen to Jeri insisting that, even when she’d sat across that interrogation table from her, she hadn’t been telling her lies. Hard truths, cruel, even, but not lies. Jeri lied. Of course she did. Not to people she loved, though. “Not now. I promise.”  

Pam shivered again, and Jeri carefully adjusted her in her arms, tucking her more fully against her, breast to breast, thigh to thigh, with Pam’s head carefully coaxed to press against her neck. She let one hand trace up and down the curve of Pam’s side while the other began playing in her hair, gentle, but with the faintest caresses of her nails, too. She let her eyes fall closed, knowing Pam wouldn’t see the half-smile slipping over her lips. She liked this, having Pam naked in her arms, clinging to her for both comfort and warmth, trusting Jeri to sooth the anger and regret that burned in her gut, even though Jeri had been the one who triggered them in the first place. Pam probably didn’t even realize what she was giving her, how much power she was allowing Jeri to reclaim just by staying in her arms, listening to her as she carefully crafted her second chance.

“Don’t say that,” Pam finally whispered. “I think… I think I’d rather have that, from you. A lie. Instead of a broken promise.”

Jeri sighed. “And if I promise you won’t get either one?”

She could feel Pam’s lips twitching against her skin. “I’m not going to believe you, Jeri. You really want  _two_  promises to break next time?”

Jeri let her hand linger at the nape of Pam’s neck, teasing through the fine hairs there with the back of a single fingernail. “I’ll take my chances.”

When Pam looked up, she was nearly smiling again, tears gone. “I almost forgot, between all the… all the lying, and all the sex, that I actually really like you.”

It was Jeri’s turn to breathe in half a laugh, but before she could find the right words to reply, Pam was staring at her lips. The weight of Pam’s gaze was so pointed that, for a moment, Jeri almost wanted to hide from it. She drew her bottom lip between her teeth, biting down and biding her time, waiting one last time for Pam’s signal, Pam’s final decision that, this time, Pam wanted her, wanted her kiss and her promises and everything that would almost certainly happen after.

Pam’s eyelids lowered halfway, and Jeri kissed her.

That night, Jeri didn’t let Pam out of her arms, whispering more half-formed promises in her ear as Pam leaned against her and she leaned against the wall, fingers pressed up inside of her, Jeri’s damaged palm, the thigh beneath it, and the arm around her waist the only thing keeping Pam from falling, boneless with pleasure and the release of so many emotions she’d kept unspoken and wire-tight, the last lingering bits of fragile control lost as she came.

And Pam let Jeri do it again, once more against the wall, then on her knees as Pam sat naked and resplendent on the top of her desk, silhouetted against the illusion of moonlight created by the New York skyline. Jeri never even took off her clothes, never wanted to. All she wanted was to drown in Pam’s pleasure, Pam’s forgiveness, and her name,  _“Jeri, oh, god, Jeri,”_  pealing off her lips again and again into the night.

///

The next morning, her knees protested.

So when it happened again, she went to Pam’s apartment.

And the time after that, and the time after that, slowly but surely replacing knife cuts on her back with thin, quickly-fading scratches in rows of five that appeared each morning after, deeper crescents left behind on her shoulders and down near the base of her spine by Pam’s perfect manicure, Pam’s mark, Pam’s revenge, and it was so much more than Jeri had dared to hope for.

They didn’t talk. Not the way they used to. They couldn’t talk about their jobs, wouldn’t talk about their past, and that left a silence neither of them quite knew how to fill.

No, that wasn’t quite true. They filled it with touches and whispers and gasps and moans and Jeri learned Pam’s body better than she’d ever had the chance to before. And that was another sort of talking. Desire had Pam open enough to reveal other things, words Jeri could say that would have her trembling and wet before she had even touched her, just by letting her know how much she wanted her, how stunning she was when she was half gone with desire, how irreplaceable she was, how much she missed her in the office every day. She could see Pam didn’t want to like it, didn’t want to get so incredibly turned on by nothing but Jeri’s praise, but she couldn’t seem to help it. She would stiffen in Jeri’s arms whenever Jeri punctuated a kiss with a particularly effective compliment, and Jeri would stare directly into her eyes, refusing to let her hide from it.

Eventually, the stiffness wore away, and Pam’s body practically begged for Jeri’s words, even if her mouth never would.

It matured, though, turning from some strange and dangerous coping mechanism into some even stranger habit, then into something else entirely, something that started to feel an awful lot like… the time before. Something where, sometimes, Jeri would wake up in Pam’s bed in the morning, they would make coffee together, and quietly go their separate ways. Oh, it was different, and Jeri couldn’t hide from the fact that nothing could really go back to the way it had been, when this was nothing more than an easy, expected, illicit affair, but now… Pam was letting her start over, letting her wear away at the darker things that had happened between  _the_   _time_   _before_  and the strange and tenuous  _now_  until it finally felt like they were moving forward again.  

Months passed, and words started coming more easily. Their lives were changing, separating, pulling farther and farther from the days when Pam was her secretary. Pam had her own ambitions, and Jeri encouraged them, but she had other things on her mind. She had gained something unexpected from all the hours she spent on Jessica’s pet project, the seemingly endless trials for Kilgrave victims she’d exhausted herself winning without taking in a penny. She’d lost time, lost a bit of money, but people  _liked_  her.

It wasn’t something she’d bothered with, upholding any particular public persona, but in the wake of something like this, she didn’t even have to try. Jessica hadn’t wanted any attention. She let Jeri paint her as just another one of the victims, written off as nothing more than another Kilgrave pawn, which meant Jeri’s pro bono work was enough to accidentally craft her into… some semblance of a hero.

The publicity was making her job increasingly difficult, but it was making it harder and harder to forget old ambitions, too. Public approval could be a very useful thing, especially for someone with a law degree and a… healthy appreciation of power.

Pam noticed her distraction. She started asking questions Jeri wasn’t ready to answer.  _Shouldn’t_ answer. Because answers, in this case, would mean acknowledging a situation that was rapidly spiraling out of her control.

But Pam was persistent. And Jeri had fallen so far out of the habit of secrets with her.

///

They were naked together; it was that kind of evening, the damp cold outdoors lending itself to a particular kind of intimacy, skin on skin and everything close and warm. Jeri was stretched out along the length of Pam’s spine, pressing her into the bedsheets, one hand wrapped carefully around her waist, nestled between her legs, stroking inside her.

It had taken that much to get Pam quiet. She had been met at the door with questions that couldn’t be silenced with kisses. “Jeri! You did a TV interview today! What was that about?” had led to a shaken head and a quick loss of clothing, but she wasn’t meeting Pam’s eyes. “You  _never_ give interviews! Jeri, are you even listening to me?” had followed, and Jeri had pulled them into the bedroom, and stole Pam’s questions right off her lips.

She saved her words for when Pam had almost forgotten, waited until Pam was panting under her, pressing back onto her fingers, making those little sounds that Jeri would never get tired of winning from her. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, pressing a kiss between Pam’s shoulder blades. “You’re right. I’m distracted. I just… I have some big decisions coming up. I know you don’t want work here, so I—”

“Jeri,” Pam hissed, shoving a hand under herself to grab Jeri’s wrist, stilling her motions inside of her. “You can’t  _do_  this to me. Either we stop, get dressed, and you’re going to tell me what’s going on, or you’re going to shut up, and you’re going to fuck me.”

It was the strangest déjà vu, a hint of their old dynamic, and Jeri wasn’t sure how she felt about that, so she let everything pause, but didn’t move away, keeping Pam right where she was, pinned beneath her.  

“I’m… considering politics,” she admitted. “A senate seat is opening up. I could fill it. What do you think? It might be just the thing to distance us from this whole… mess.”

“ _Us?”_

Jeri winced. “You know what I mean.” She crooked her fingers.

Pam gasped into the pillow, fingernails digging in to Jeri’s hand, but she didn’t try to pull away. She tilted her chin down, forehead still resting against the bed, neck tense. “Politics,” Pam said slowly, and Jeri could feel the glare in her words, even if the only one who could see it was the pillow. “ _The death of truth.”_

Jeri blinked. She leaned forward, running her tongue up the column of Pam’s throat, lingering just below her ear. “Nietzsche?” She chuckled. “What, will you accuse me of ‘the prostitution of the intellect’?”

Pam whimpered. Jeri had added another finger.

“Is that a no?” Jeri pressed. She decided she liked her way far, far better. Serious conversations always went better  _with_  sex. “I would win in a landslide.”

“Do what you want,” Pam hissed. “Just… oh god… Jeri, s-stop talking about it while you’re inside me.”

Jeri found herself chuckling again. She couldn’t remember the last time she had laughed this much during sex. It was… nice. Pam deserved a reward.

She leaned down again, pressing her breasts fully against Pam’s back, giving herself even more leverage as she drove her fingers inside of her. “I don’t know,” she breathed, tugging Pam’s earlobe between her teeth. “You seem to be enjoying it. And you’re the one quoting Nietzsche.”

“Shut up, Jeri,” Pam gasped.

“No.” Jeri grinned against Pam’s neck, making sure she could feel it. “I don’t think I will. Did you forget how well I know you? I think you would just  _love_  being in bed with a senator.”

“ _Love of power is the d-demon of men,_ ” Pam managed.

Jeri was impressed, but she ignored the larger implications of the moralism. If Pam could still quote political philosophy at her, she wasn’t being  _nearly_  demonic enough to have earned that line. “Oh, shhh. As much as I adore your mind, you know perfectly well what Nietzsche would say about all of this: the only real truth is  _our world of passions and desires_.” She flicked a thumb over Pam’s clit. “And the will to power.”

“Jeri,” Pam whimpered, and Jeri felt it, that newly-discovered pride, blooming bright and heady somewhere behind her ribcage. She loved this, watching this woman come undone for her. Maybe there was no truth in politics, but why would anyone care for those truths when truth was here, hot and wet and pulsing around her fingers and spilling need from Pam’s lips past the point when lies are possible. Jeri’s breathing was ragged, and a part of her wanted to grind down, to take her own pleasure even as she gave it, but she was in control, and she wanted to torment Pam’s sensibilities just a bit more.

“Why stop at the Senate, either?”

She could feel Pam stiffen beneath her, not wanting to respond to this, trying to keep herself still, but her body betrayed her, hips pressing down against Jeri’s hand in increasing desperation. “W-what?” she stammered.  

“Hmm,” Jeri murmured, letting her delight into the sound. “Madame Secretary might be nice.”

With what seemed an incredible gathering of will, Pam half-growled, “Can’t you be happy… ruining  _one_ country?”

Without warning, Jeri wrapped her arm around Pam’s shoulders, pulling her upright into her lap. “No,” she said, pressing Pam down against her hand, her thigh. “I don’t think I can. And I don’t think you want me to.”

Pam took advantage of the new position, turning her head to steal Jeri’s words with a kiss. Jeri allowed it. Pam’s lips had always been delicious, warm and soft and  _talented_  in so many ways. Pam’s lips tasted like victory: hot and sweet and infinitely satisfying, and while Jeri would never don armor or take up the sword, she could fight wars for these lips, this skin, this woman, all the same. Fight, win… conquer.

“Don’t, Jeri,” Pam muttered when she pulled away, raising a thumb to replace her mouth against Jeri’s bottom lip. “Don’t run for president. Don’t do it. You’ll work yourself to death.”

Jeri frowned, fingers stilling inside her even as she pressed a quick kiss to the proffered thumb. She hadn’t expected Pam to steal her thunder. “We all work ourselves to death,” she said, carefully recovering.

“Jeri—”

She resumed her motions immediately, sliding one palm up to rasp across a nipple as she ground her other palm against Pam’s clit, doing exactly what she knew she needed to push Pam to the edge, pressing hard, thigh and hand working together, fingers driving up and forward again and again, until she felt Pam beginning to lose control, shuddering, head falling back against her shoulders.

“You wouldn’t want it, then?” she taunted, lips brushing against Pam’s ear. “The Oval Office.”  

Pam whimpered. “Jeri, n-no, you—”

“—First Lady…” Jeri finally added, letting the words rumble through her chest.

“Oh  _hell_ , Jeri. You, you can’t… God, Jeri, I—”

“— _God is dead_ ,” Jeri whispered, and she could practically hear Nietzsche rolling in his grave, clawing at his mound of dirt, screaming through the centuries about the depravity of female sexuality, the affront of this, of Pam coming around her fingers as Jeri bastardized his most famous words. “There’s just me,” Jeri added, carefully sliding her fingers from Pam’s now too-sensitive flesh. Pam slumped against her, boneless and vulnerable in the aftermath of her pleasure. “Just me,” Jeri murmured again, pulling Pam close, tucking them together. “I’m here.” She traced her way through Pam’s hair, working patiently through the tangles of sex as Pam recovered. She could feel her own desire sitting heavy and low in her gut, but she had come to enjoy this so much more than physical release, the joy of having so perfectly destroyed someone else with pleasure, waiting in her arms to be put back together again. “I love you.” 

“You’re horrible, Jeri,” Pam finally whispered. “This is worse than last time. You did  _not_  just try to propose to me with the Presidency.”

Jeri chuckled again, tucking a finger beneath Pam’s chin, turning her for a quick kiss. “Not at all,” she said, smiling against Pam’s lips. “I have to win it first.”


End file.
